* Now here’s a great one, horror fans: Film blogger Girish Shambu initiates a discussion of horror movies, specifically whether there are films or filmmakers whose work is so revolting or frightening you can’t bring yourself to (re-)watch them. The post and the extremely rewarding comment thread address horror from the perspective of bona fide cineastes whose primary interests in film lie elsewhere–a really fascinating viewpoint for those of us immersed in the genre on a daily basis. Curt, CRwM, B-Sol, Bruce, Ken, Jon, Steven, Jason, I hope you’re reading…

* Lionsgate has changed the release date for The Midnight Meat Train again. Now it’s not coming out till August 1st. For those keeping track at home, it’s gone from May to August to July back to August again. Either they saw how The Strangers did and want to give it a little more breathing room instead of putting it up against Hellboy II, or they really just don’t give a crap.

* Dawn of the Dead/300/Watchmen director Zack Snyder will not be directing his long-discussed epic zombie movie Army of the Dead–that honor falls to “commercial director and visual artist” Matthijs van Heijningen. So, that’s what that is.

* Bruce Baugh reviews Dan Simmons’s historical horror novel The Terror, focusing on the disconnect between the first three-quarters of the book and its denouement. I personally liked the shift, yet I was still left feeling, as Bruce does, that I’d sort of wasted my time in getting there.

* Curt Purcell returns to CRwM’s torture-porn post series, this time singling out the aspects he found really successful.

* Call me crazy, but $115 for every single tie-in issue of the DC summer event Final Crisis seems not unreasonable to me. That’s going to be six or seven different trade-paperback collections when all is said and done, right? If you’re really into DC, it’s sort of like buying two or three complete-season HBO on DVD box sets. The other thing to think about with these sorts of cost-analyses for sprawling multi-title crossovers is that the kinds of people who are crazy enough to buy every single issue for completism’s sake–the people who plunk down money for Countdown: Arena or the World War Hulk issues of Heroes for Hire–have long ago made the bargain with themselves that this is how they will spend their disposable income. You might as well bemoan the cost of limited-edition Nikes to a sneaker collector who’s got a closet full of them. (Via Topless Robot.)

* Speaking of Final Crisis, here’s Tom Spurgeon’s review of the first issue. I admit that my own was largely constructed as a counterpoint to Tom’s.

* Go, look: Matt Furie art! (Via Monster Brians.)

* My friend David Paggi interviews Jason, arguably the most underappreciated cartoonist going right now.

* Jog reviews Richard Corben’s House of Horror: Lovecraft #1.

* The Onion A.V. Club interviews Joel McHale, the host of The Soup. One thing both the interview and the comment thread get at is that part of the reason the show is so funny is because Joel’s contempt for the stupid shit he’s making fun of is clearly genuine. (Via Jim Treacher.)

* For some reason my RSS reader coughed up a bunch of random, old posts from Reverse Shot today, and among them was a post by CNW on the opening arc of The Sopranos Season Six, Part One that I really enjoyed.

* Hooray for nostalgia! My pal Jesse Thompson runs down the 10 Greatest Girls Toys Secretly Coveted by Boys for Topless Robot. I’m right there with him on She-Ra. It’s like a He-Man expansion pack!

* Doomsday with Legos!

* Your quote of the day comes from The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire’s Carnacki:

…why do I blog? For the same reason I grow sunflowers. I like it and if other people see it and like it, that’s great. It’s as simple as that.

* And your image of the day comes from Eric Reynolds:

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